Sixers' season ends in a win, but rebuild effort will remain

Sixers guard Tony Wroten has the ball stripped away by Miami’s Dwyane Wade, right, while going up to shoot during the first half of Wednesday’s game in Miami. The Sixers ended the season as they started it, with a win over the Heat. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

MIAMI — The 76ers’ experiment, every last game of it, is over. The foundation, in theory, is set. The basement floor, unquestionably, was reached.

The result of Wednesday’s game shared a common thread with the 81 that had preceded it: A win or a loss carried equal weight, as these Sixers were bound to trudge into a lottery-influenced offseason regardless.

The Sixers’ final game of the regular season was a 100-87 victory over the LeBron James- and Chris Bosh-less Miami Heat. It made for their first winning streak since Dec. 29-Jan. 4, when they won four straight.

And yet it served as nothing more than a formality toward achieving the finality of a painful 63-loss season.

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At AmericanAirlines Arena, the Sixers (19-63) put the wraps on a season that featured a league-record-tying losing streak, and yet no coach or general manager will have been relieved of his duties. Using that as a compass, this season is unlike any other in franchise history. Their record, which put the Sixers in the No. 2 position for next month’s draft lottery, was the anticipated product.

So much of this season was built upon future chances, yet moving forward, there is one certainty: Michael Carter-Williams will carry the torch. The point guard, whom coach Brett Brown sees as the obvious choice for NBA Rookie of the Year, is tasked with easing the rebuild process — even in a locker room that will experience nearly as much turnover as this season.

“The message gets sent, like you did in a classroom as a kid. You’d send it and it would get spread around the room,” Brown said. “Michael has the responsibility to say, ‘This is the deal and only on these terms are you welcome, and otherwise you’re going to have to fix some things.’

“I can only do so much and the word will be spread to a freshman class by a handful of guys that will remain. That’s how you slowly start to build standards and habits and that’s how a culture is built.”

If the Sixers are looking for a leader, Carter-Williams is a good place to start. He had 12 points, six rebounds and four assists against the Heat (54-28), putting an exclamation point at the end of his rookie-season sentence. The marquee moment of Carter-Williams’ game came in the third quarter, when he clung to Miami’s Dwyane Wade and forced him into committing a 24-second violation.

Thaddeus Young added 20 points and nine rebounds for the Sixers, who finished with fewer than 20 wins for only the third time in 65 seasons.

Of those guys, Carter-Williams may be the lone holdover.

It’s conceivable that two-thirds of Brown’s roster will be pillaged. The building blocks, like Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel, are certainties. Role-playing Tony Wroten is under contract, and he’ll return, too.

Beyond them is anyone’s guess.

Young, who is under contract, may request a trade. Elliot Williams and Jarvis Varnado, who have team options, may be let go. Arnett Moultrie, whose player option has been picked up, may be a $1.14 million bullet worth biting. Trade-deadline acquisition Byron Mullens also has a player option — but the Sixers went 0-18 with him and 4-4 without him.

There are question marks throughout the Sixers’ locker room, not unlike the NBA Draft board, on which they’ll likely have a pair of top-10 picks. So much of this season, Brown’s first as a coach and Sam Hinkie’s first as a general manager, was left to faith.

“I had no idea what to expect,” said rookie swingman Hollis Thompson, who’s been with the team since training camp. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this at all, but I’m loving it.”

Added Wroten: “You’re not going to be 82-0. It’s definitely not the record we were looking for, but, at the end of the day, we got better … and we managed to stay together.”

Starting from ground zero afforded the Sixers carte blanche to make mistakes, to tinker with their roster and use their regular-season slate as on-the-job training for fringe players and D-Leaguers.

Guys like Jarvis Varnado and Brandon Davies were able to share the court. Guys like Adonis Thomas and Casper Ware were able to share minutes. Guys like Thompson and Henry Sims were exposed as diamonds in the rough with potential to make next season’s roster. And along the way, the likes of Dewayne Dedmon, Darius Johnson-Odom and James Nunnally were granted multi-week tryouts on the game’s greatest stage.

“Isn’t that the exciting thing for all of these guys?” Brown asked, without seeking an answer. “And it’s a common theme. Some people just need to be given an opportunity, and once you take that opportunity, people figure out a way to use it, respect it, develop it and never let it go.”

The Sixers’ next opportunities for development are rampant in the summer months.

In May, there’s the draft combine and the draft lottery. A month later is the draft itself. And in July, the Sixers will field a pair of summer-league teams, one in both Orlando and Las Vegas.

Offseason? Inactivity? Not exactly. Sure, Brown won’t be coaching deep into June as he’d grown accustomed to in San Antonio, but this summer will be as critical to the Sixers’ transformation as any.

“Relief that the season has ended truly does not creep into my mind,” Brown said, “because it’s trumped by the excitement I see going forward. I’m so excited to watch the direction of ping-pong balls.”